Poe tells us in his _Philosophy of Composition_,--an unconvincing account of the origin of _The Raven_,--that he regards the death of a beautiful maiden the most poetical and melancholy topic. But there were factors that made him think so, and these were the deaths of women he loved and the rejections by girls with whom he was infatuated. He lost his mother when he was three years old. Mrs. Lannard, who is said to have inspired _To Helen_, and who was "the first pure ideal love of my soul" (Poe) died when he was fifteen. (She is also said to have inspired _The Sleeper_.) He lost Mrs. Allan, his foster mother, to whom he was greatly attached, when he was twenty. He had also lost three sweethearts by the time he was twenty-three. These he looked upon as departed or gone from him. In the _Bridal Ballad_, written probably on the occasion of the marriage of Miss Royster, he refers to himself as a dead lover. The poems _To F----_, _To One in Paradise_, and _To Zante_, as I showed, were most likely written to Mary, though he may have had the others in mind, who either died or were gone from him. All this shows the strong infantile influences on Poe in damming up of his libido. He was, therefore, occupied with the subject of death not because of Virginia's illness or death, but because he lost, before he was twenty-three, six girls or women. His interest in the subject made him hope death could be conquered or stayed, and hence we have _Ligeia_ and _The Facts in the Case of Valdemar_. There is a philosophic treatment of death in _The Colloquy of Monos and Una_. II Tales of burial alive, such as _The Casque of Amontillado_, _The Black Cat_, etc., are also characteristic of Poe. What is the significance of Poe's interest in the subject of burial alive and in people who are guilty of burying others alive? Very few people would probably accept Freud's theory, but that master psychologist as a rule bases his theories on facts, and hence I will quote his views on the subject. In a footnote of his book on _The Interpretation of Dreams_, p. 244, he says: "It is only of late that I have learned to value the significance of fancies and unconscious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain the explanation of the curious fear felt by so many people of being buried alive, as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in a life after death, which represents nothing but a projection into the future of this mysterious life before birth. _The act of birth, moreover_, is the first _experience_ with _fear_, and _in this the source and model_ of the emotion of fear." Would Freud's theory not also account for Poe's great gift of the analysis and depiction of the emotion of fear?